August 2010

Starting with water and sanitation interventions and then trying to gauge the health impact can actually take us away from our desired goal of securing health improvements. Reversing this approach to start with health impact (first) and then determine causality (second) may create a more effective framework to optimize the trade-offs between water, sanitation and a range of other interventions!

The water and sanitation sector has been subject to numerous health impact studies. These are complex undertakings that require careful intervention and control conditions, extensive and carefully managed data sets, considerable time and money. Even in the best cases, quantifying the health impact of water and sanitation interventions is plagued by the high levels of uncertainty that surround the confounding variables. Furthermore, such studies do not quantify the relative health impact of choosing to invest in water and sanitation rather than breast feeding, or female literacy, or any other intervention. Even worse, such studies can draw a positive correlation between an intervention and the health impact … while the overall health for the particular target population has decreased. In such a scenario, it could be legitimately argued that investing in water and sanitation (and not female literacy) was the wrong choice - if the goal was a positive impact on health.

Pakistan’s deadly floods have affected more than 14 million people, with some estimates putting the figure considerably higher. The affected area covers 132,421 km, including 1.4 million acres of cropped land. Continuing rains have caused additional flooding and hindered relief activities.

The deep power crisis that Bangladesh is currently living through is affecting more people than the 40 percent population who currently have access to electricity. The reasons are simple.

For industries power outages increase production costs and the operating uncertainty that enterprises face. Losses arise from spoilage of goods-in-process and damage to machinery. Often the cuts in power supply cause production losses lasting beyond the duration of the outage. E-commerce and ICT cannot operate without reliable supplies of electricity. Mechanization of businesses is rendered ineffective, affecting productivity. SMEs rely on electricity for a variety of needs—lighting, refrigeration, grain mills, water pumping, food preservation and you name it. More generally, economic growth that creates jobs and enhances incomes requires electricity. Less and unreliable electricity translates into less and unreliable jobs. This is now a well established fact.

A World Bank report released on July 30 finds that poverty in Pakistan fell by an impressive 17.3 percentage points between 2001 and 2008 (from 34.5 percent in 2001-02 to 17.2 percent in 2007-08). Three out of Pakistan’s four major provinces – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly NWFP), Punjab, and Sindh – saw significant declines in poverty during this period. The largest fall in poverty was in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). According to the Bank report “high level of remittances, both foreign and domestic, seem to have facilitated” the decline in poverty in KP.

Pakistan saw migrant remittances reach a record $ 8.9 billion in fiscal year 2010, an increase of 14 percent compared to the 2009 fiscal year despite the global economic crisis (Pakistan’s fiscal year runs from July to June). The World Bank report says “Continued strong growth in worker’s remittances in the past few years has also contributed to improvements in the external current account balance” and “have facilitated improvement in the country’s external position”.

Microfinance originated in South Asia in the 1970s when pioneers such as Mohammed Yunus of Grameen, introduced the idea that providing small loans to the poor, especially women, can help generate income. In the last thirty years, after many experiments from around the world, the term microfinance now not only includes credit but also savings, insurance and cash transfer services for low income families.

An explosive growth of microfinance institutions (MFIs) has been seen within the last decade, both in India and globally. In fact, following the recent financial crisis, both Grameen Bank and Kiva have started lending in the United States.

The largest MFI in India, SKS made its first public offering on July 28, 2010. Backed by powerful funders like George Soros and Narayan Murthy, this is only the second “pure” MFI in the world to go public. The first one was the Mexican MFI, Compartamos, in 2007.

The Microfinance Gateway is the most comprehensive online resource for the global microfinance community and recently features an article based on eleven interviews with diverse experts on what they think the IPO could mean for the poor. Here’s a sneak-peek:

International Youth Day is a time to celebrate the youth of countries from around the world. The United Nations announced the theme for this year as Dialogue and Mutual Understanding, emphasizing the importance of communication not only within their generation, but among different generations as well. Only through conversation and open dialogue can opinions and perspectives be understood, cultivating ideas for change and developing aspirations for the future.

The Wage Board on garments in Bangladesh nearly doubled minimum wages on July 29, 2010. The minimum wage at the entry level will be raised to Tk 3,000 a month (or about $43) from Tk 1,662.50 ($24). The new pay structure, proposed to be effective from November 1, maintains the existing seven grades with the highest pay fixed at Tk 9,300 ($140) per month. About 3.5 million Bangladeshis work in the garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of the country’s exports. International companies like Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Zara, Tesco, Carrefour, Gap, Metro, Marks & Spencer, Kohl's, Levi Strauss and Tommy Hilfiger all import in bulk from Bangladesh.

Garment workers apparently are unhappy over their wages, even after the proposed increase. They protested by smashing vehicles and blocking traffic in various garment sites in Dhaka following the announcement of the wage increase. Why has the frequency of violence increased?

If you were in Bangladesh in June, you would have found teachers in schools, preachers in mosques, and ads in newspapers, television, loudspeakers and pamphlets, encouraging people to bring in their incandescent bulbs to exchange with new Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) – and encouraged they were! On Saturday, June 19th 2010, at over 1,400 rural and urban distribution centers spread across 27 districts, manned by teachers, utility workers and other volunteers, Bangladeshis collectively took home about five million high quality CFL bulbs, in the first round of distribution.

They broke a record set by the British in January of 2008, for the most number of CFL bulbs distributed in a single day―some 4.5 million. In June, the Government and people of Bangladesh were inspired to do even better … and they did!